Saturday, January 26, 2013

Kicking up a raquette

If you’ve read this post, you
will know I am not a great fan of winter sports. However, I am an open-minded
type of gal so when someone suggested I try snowshoeing, I gamely agreed. I
imagined it to be a sedate activity with no chance of careering down a mountainside in a wildly
out-of-control fashion, screaming, as I tend to do whilst
skiing.

The French word for snowshoes is
raquettes. If this conjures up a game of tennis, you wouldn’t be far wrong.
When the French began to colonize the cold regions of North America in the
seventeenth century, one of the ideas they adopted from the Amerindians was the
ultimate in sensible shoes. They called them raquettes because they resembled
the rachètes or racquets of the jeu de paume, the forerunner of modern tennis.
This gave them a great advantage over the English who didn’t realize until a
few years later that life doesn’t have to come to a standstill because of a bit
of bad weather. Judging from recent newspaper reports, they seem to have
forgotten again.

The
French brought the raquettes back to France, adapting the shape to suit the
steep and rugged slopes of the mountainous regions where they used them for
practical purposes, like hunting or shepherding. It wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century that
snowshoeing was introduced as a leisure activity, by Henri Duhamel. Since the
mid-twentieth century, the sport has grown in popularity.

So I set
off one crisp, bright morning, to try it for myself. I was told that if I could
walk, I could snowshoe. Well, yes, OK – I can walk but I don’t usually look
like a constipated duck while I’m doing it. Nor do I keel over every time I
want to turn around…so that premise is not strictly true.

Also, I
hate being cold. Despite the layers of vests, fleeces, thick socks and two
pairs of woolly tights, I was absolutely freezing. I just wished I’d smeared
myself with lard and stuffed newspapers down my trousers like I said I would…

Once in
the forest, however, these minor inconveniences melted away in the winter
sunshine. The scenery was breathtaking: swathes of sparkling, untrodden snow
billowed around me like a plump eiderdown; the air glittered with diamond dust and – oh! - it was so beautifully quiet. At any moment, I expected to see Mr
Tumnus trotting towards me playing his flute…

And,
yes. I did fall over, several times. But apparently, you are allowed to slide
down slopes on your bottom, so I affected a convincing nonchalance whenever I
did so. I think it worked…

I
waddled home, still freezing, aching slightly but very happy indeed. There are
magical places in this sorry world after all…

I’ve
been invited to go cross-country skiing next. I’m looking forward to it, I really am. I’ve already
started stocking up on lard…